


When That Devil Calls Your Name

by SaltCore



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Brief mentions of Jesse's various mentors/parental figures, Gen, Hurt Jesse, Language, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-14 17:03:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11787543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltCore/pseuds/SaltCore
Summary: Another day, another shootout. It goes about as well as anything ever does for you, Jesse.





	When That Devil Calls Your Name

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by “Never Tell” by The Builders and The Butchers, and I recommend it for musical accompaniment if you're into that sort of thing.

                Gunfire echoes through the streets, more familiar to you than silence ever was. _And lo, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death._ Your step-daddy used to quote that shit at you, but hell if these buildings don’t loom like the walls of a valley and there’s definitely death out there waiting. You run up the street, you need to get close enough for a clear shot, need to put a few of these bastards down before you all get surrounded.

                There isn’t much in the way of cover, but there’s not none. You feel years younger running and ducking up the street, your heart hammering and lungs burning. You can get a little closer, you think. It’s not that far to the next sturdy wall. The way they’re laying down lead, you don’t think they can aim for shit.

                That don’t mean they can’t get lucky.

                Pain explodes through your nervous system. You stagger the last step to safety and catch yourself on the wall, more bullets chewing up the corner of the building as you go. Shock comes for the pain, and for a minute you don’t feel anything but the dampness spreading down your front. You came out here to do something, Jesse, and you’re not dead yet. You draw your weapon with your mama’s voice is ringing in your ears _Look, mijo, stand still and just look_ and you breathe in—two men on the roof, one looking over the dumpster, one standing in front of the building—and you exhale and swing your arm up. You stop thinking, you just look and when the moment is right your finger squeezes _unodostrescuatro_ and every man drops. Drop like the tin cans your mama set up on a rotted fencepost out in the sun and dust. Remember the way her rough, scarred hands squeezed your shoulders, pride woven through her voice. Remember the first time you got a good look at an exit wound, nausea curdling your stomach.

                You drop down, let yourself curl around the wound. You waste a breath groaning, as if that could beat back the hot wash of pain. You have to take another now and it’s agony. You try to get your lungs to settle for little sips of air instead. You try to remind yourself what it felt like to have your arm blown off, just to put things in perspective. It’s Reyes you hear, spitting mad, _Get up, get moving, I’m not watching your skinny ass die out here._ He took personal exception to you getting blown halfway to Hell, but it was his quiet after, the way he lurked in the corner of your hospital room like he was waiting for someone to try to finish the job, that really stuck with you. You slept good those few weeks but sometimes it seemed like Reyes got something blown off too, and he never got nothing to replace it.

                The dirt sucks up the blood, greedy for any moisture. You didn’t have much to give to start with, and you can’t spare much more. You’ll bleed it all out if something doesn’t happen, and soon. You’re too far out to call for help, you know that. You just killed four, but there’s more coming, there’s always more coming. You can’t risk Angela’s life calling her out here, so you have to move, Jesse.  You twist over onto your stomach, and your vision goes white. Little, tiny breaths, remember that. You lie face down on the ground. You have to move, Jesse, you have to keep moving.

                Your new arm doesn’t care about the lack of blood, and it pulls you up by a crack in the wall. The new joint in your shoulder still pulls in a way that doesn’t seem right, won’t ever seem quite right, but it does the job. Would probably do the job without you attached. When you get upright, you have to lean but you’re standing and you press the hand that’s going pale and shaky against the wound to deprive the ground of any more of you.

                You stagger forward, and it hurts but you can do it. Just one foot in front of the other, like you’ve always done. Gotta keep going ‘til it’s done. What did Ana used to tell you? _No rest for the wicked, and the righteous don’t need any._ Something like that. Always a hard ass, that Ana, but that’s what you needed to get right and you both knew it.

                Your step-daddy used to call you a devil-spawn, and, hell, you might be. You might be the son of Satan himself, cause it would take something that evil to leave your mama all alone with a little baby growing in her. Leave her destitute and desperate, all alone, so far from home, as kind and as good as she was. And then she left you, all the strength gone out of her, her body destroying itself, burning itself up until there wasn’t anything left of her. And without her you strayed and you roamed and you rambled, and maybe you proved your step-daddy right.  Cause you walk right up to the edge of hell, with all your mama’s saints and all your step-daddy’s demons looking on, and you tip them men into the flames. Bullet’s such a little thing, but it’s drug along more than you can remember. More than you’d care to remember. One’s gonna drag you one day, but not today, not right now. There’s a man-made angel with a sweet word and a healing touch, and so long as you keep breathing and keep walking she’ll set you to rights.

                It’s a long walk back, longer than it seemed going out. Words crackle in your ears, and how much of your life has that been true? It’s like living ghosts, haunting you everywhere you go. You tell them what happened. You tell them you didn’t want Angela to get bored, so you’re bringing her a GSW. Always cracking jokes, it’s a constant fault and a persistent strength with you. Her admonishments dull the pain a little, nothing quite like winding her up.

                You come back to the patch of cover she’s hiding behind, practically perfect safety in your book. She nudges you down, and you collapse with a groan. She’ll take it from here. Just like always, you’ve walked up to the edge of hell and walked back. And, lo, you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but you’re not afraid, because you’re the meanest motherfucker in the valley. Always have been, always will be.

**Author's Note:**

> This started as "How does Deadeye work?" meta and ended as a Jesse character introspection. Happens to the best of us.
> 
> ((hmu at https://saltytothecore.tumblr.com/))


End file.
